I agree that the fourth ending would have been an awesome surprise. With the butler being so in your face, I wouldn't have been surprised by a the-butler-did-it ending. It would have been fitting._________________How do you know what kind of pictures they are if you're such a lay-dee?

So, I saw this last night, and for the most part, I agree with Michael's assessment. It did feel as if the movie had been "dumbed down" and thus lost quite a bit of what made it enjoyable for me. That's not to say that I hated it. There were parts I quite enjoyed, including Mrs. White thinking the rope was a snake. Laughed out lout at that one. But some of the changes seemed to occur just "cause."

Miss Scarlet was probably my favorite performance. To me, at least, she felt pretty grounded, with elements of her archetype bleeding through, but not the shrieking caricature that was Mrs. Peacock. Col. Mustard being dumb was funny the first time. But then we were reminded about it ten more times.

And while I appreciated Mrs. White's homage to Madeline Kahn, I thought she lacked Kahn's "composure" for lack of a better word. It was Madeline Kahn playing Amy in Company in that concert, not Mrs, White in Clue. You could feel the neurosis of the "flames" monologue from the moment she entered, and I suppose one could debate about the merit of that choice.

Yvette's costume bugged me. It was like a maid Halloween costume. Didn't quite get the red pumps either. There was also a throwaway mention of her being an undercover English agent?

And, also, she and Mrs. Peacock had a weird martial arts bit where they fight over the evidence against them all and then bow to a gong sound effect.

Now, I love a good campy Clue. I really do. And I think that if the movie never existed, and this was an adaptation of the board game that I was seeing for the first time, I would have loved it. It was a fine adaptation of Clue itself; not so much the movie.

I did really enjoy the Scooby Doo-esque montage of the characters running in and out of rooms and stealing the broom closet/front door key from one another. Does it fit in with the movie? No, but it reminded me of the Clue book series with how silly it was and trying to keep track of all the switches. Unfortunately, it didn't really make much a difference because it didn't really matter who ended up with it in the end, since Wadsworth just tells you he never threw it away and everyone ends up with an identical key from somewhere.

Though, I think the play really highlighted how challenging a straight adaptation of the movie would be. Without the ability to cut or narrow focus with a camera, it's really obvious when someone is missing from the group (e.g. outside the billiard room doorway when Yvette is screaming.) So kudos to them for tackling it._________________"Like my daddy always says, give me a good neuromuscular poison any day."

I think the Yvette in the doorway scene could have been better if she were standing downstage center and the others "enter" upstage center so she kind of blocks them and it's hard to see who isn't there. The way they did it with Yvette on the side of the stage, it was clear that the "star" of the show wasn't in the scene. Especially since you see her get up right as they all left the study. She should have just remained seated until the scene change._________________How do you know what kind of pictures they are if you're such a lay-dee?

That's true, and I think it would have made for superior staging. Now that I think of it, the show made no effort to disguise who was murdering whom. Which is fine when you don't narrate to the audience to try and solve it.

Plum ran off in a super obvious way before murdering Boddy, and Yvette/Mrs. White was even worse. The rest of the characters all have a scene without them, and then Mrs. White runs out and gives a bit about Yvette attacking her and having to escape her clutches using her illusionist husband's old tricks.

It was just bizarre because the blackout segment from the movie, which was completely changed, would have been easy to stage, masked the killer's identity, and allowed for some campy mischief in the dark.

Also at my show, after finding out Green was FBI, Wadsowrth ad-libbed during his death monologue: "Do you guys even have a director right now? Who do you even report to?" That got a good laugh out of me, and it made Mrs. White and Col. Mustard break character._________________"Like my daddy always says, give me a good neuromuscular poison any day."